Below the bridge, on the forward section of the main deck, framed by four emergency lights, three crewmen were busy assembling the special gun that would be used to shoot a messenger line to the iceberg. All three wore black, insulated wet suits, with heat packs at their waists, and their faces were covered by rubber hoods and large diving masks. Each man was secured by a steel-link tether that was fixed to the forward escape hatch; the tethers were long enough to allow them to work freely, but not long enough to let them fall overboard.
Although it was not a weapon, the gun looked so wicked that an uninformed observer might have expected it to fire nuclear mortar rounds. Nearly as tall as any of the men assembling it, weighing three hundred fifty pounds, it consisted of just three primary components that were now pretty much locked together. The square base contained the motor that operated the pulleys for the breeches buoy, and it was fastened to four small steel rings recessed in the deck. The rings had been a feature of the boat ever since the Pogodin had begun putting special-forces agents ashore in foreign lands. The blocklike middle component of the gun fitted into a swivel mount on the base and contained the firing mechanism, the gunman’s handgrips, and a large drum of messenger line. The final piece was a four-foot-long barrel with a five-inch-diameter bore, which the three-man team had just inserted in its socket; an any-light scope was mounted at the base of the barrel. The device appeared capable of blowing a hole through a tank; on a battlefield, however, it would have been every bit as ineffective as a child’s peashooter.
At times the runneled deck was nearly dry, but that wasn’t the typical condition, and it lasted only briefly. Every time the bow dipped and a wave broke against the hull, the forward end of the boat was awash. Brightened by chunks of ice and cottony collars of frozen foam, the frigid dark sea rushed onto the deck, sloshed between the crewmen’s legs, battered their thighs, and surged to their waists before gushing away. If the Ilya Pogodin had been on the windward side of the iceberg, the towering waves of the storm would have overwhelmed the men and knocked them about mercilessly. In the sheltered lee, however, as long as they anticipated and prepared for each downward arc of the bow, they were able to stay on their feet and perform their tasks even when the sea swirled around them; and in those moments when the deck was free of water, they worked at top speed and made up for lost time.
The tallest of the three crewmen stepped away from the gun, glanced up at the bridge, and signaled the captain that they were ready to begin.
Gorov threw out the last of his tea. He gave the mug to Zhukov. “Alert the control room.”
If his risky plan to use the breeches buoy was to have any chance to succeed, the submarine had to match speeds perfectly with the iceberg. If the boat outpaced the ice, or if the ice surged ahead by even a fraction of a knot, the messenger line might pull taut, stretch, and snap faster than they could reel out new slack.
Gorov glanced at his watch. A quarter past nine. The minutes were slipping away too quickly.
One of the men on the forward deck uncapped the muzzle of the gun, which had been sealed to keep out moisture. Another man loaded a shell into the breech at the bottom.
The projectile, which would tow the messenger line, was simple in design. It looked rather like a fireworks rocket: two feet long, nearly five inches in diameter. Trailing the nylon-and-wire line, it would strike the face of the cliff, explode on impact, and fire a four-inch bolt into the ice.
That bolt, to which the messenger line was joined, could slam eight to twelve inches into a solid rockface, essentially fusing it with the natural material around it, extruding reverse-hooked pins to prevent extraction. Welded to granite or limestone—or even to shale if the rock strata were tight enough—the bolt was a reliable anchor. Certain that the far point was securely fixed, a man could travel to shore on the messenger line if necessary, climbing hand over hand. Depending on the angle of approach, he could even convey himself in a simple sling suspended from a pair of small Teflon-coated steel wheels with deep concavities in which the line traveled, propelled by a vertical hand crank. Either way, he could take with him the heavy-duty pulley and a stronger line to rig an even more reliable system from the other end.